When RIFT players cast their minds back to the last expansion, Nightmare Tide, chances are that two aspects that stick out more than the rest. Naturally, the first is the debut of landshark mounts (how did we ever live without them?). But the second has to be the stretched-out controversy over the business model, in which the expansion was given away for free and some of the gear was gated behind a paywall.

While Trion Worlds intended this to be a generous compromise, the model rankled players and prompted the team to reevaluate how to best go forward with a new expansion. The decision was made to return to the standard approach of a one-price-gets-all expansion, keeping it both “simple and fair,” according to the devs. After all, nobody — players or devs — wants a pricing controversy to get in the way of actually enjoying an expansion.

Enter RIFT:Starfall Prophecy sometime this fall, priced at $40 for the standard edition (which includes a level 65 boost) and $60 for the deluxe edition (which comes with some extras). It’s the third expansion for the six-year-old MMORPG, and instead of reinventing the wheel, Trion is happy to build upon what works as it takes its community to the stars. Read on for a rundown of everything you need to know about Starfall Prophecy and how it might be getting back old players while pleasing its current crowd.

Planar astronauts

For RIFT’s newest outing, players will definitely be going where no Telaran has gone before: to the giant Comet of Ahnket. This isn’t your average ball of space ice, but instead an interdimensional comet that’s been smashing through and picking up bits of worlds and planes here and there for quite some time. As level 65 players travel to the comet, they’ll encounter five wild new zones that have bits and pieces of landscapes from its travels.

The Comet of Ahnket is primarily themed around life and fire, which means that you’re either going to get luscious zones full of growth or fiery infernos that are best viewed at a distance. While some of the inhabitants will definitely be foreign to the ascended, some might be surprising

Players of both factions (which are now more or less working in harmony together) will start their adventures in the Scatherran Forest, where the new mission hub of Alittu resides. From there, it will be a journey through the Gedlo Badlands (fire), Xarthmire (life), AshenFall (fire), and finally to the grand endzone of Tenebrian Schism. In these zones will lurk two unknown dungeons waiting for the first footsteps of intrepid warriors.

Reaching to new heights

While there won’t be any new souls or races (Trion is currently overhauling many of its classes in its “Summer of Souls” initiative), Starfall Prophecy will still give you several ways to grow your heroic character, starting with a level cap increase to 70.

With great levels comes great responsibility to learn new systems, and that means it is time to introduce players to legendary abilities. While the early 60s had mastery levels, from level 66 to 70 players will accumulate legendary ability points. These five precious points can be spent to upgrade one of a handful of abilities in each soul to become, well, legendary. Legendary abilities are super-charged skills that purportedly change the way you play your build. Even better, many of these legendary abilities synergize remarkably well with other souls, encouraging more hybrid experimentation.

Another huge change is a revamp of the gear system for high-level characters. Once you hit Starfall Prophecy, you’ll start seeing more generic (stat-wise) gear drops as well as “planar fragments.” These fragments vary in power and purpose, but all can be used to tailor your gear to fit the type of build you enjoy. According to the devs, this system should take some of the complexity out of gear acquisition and put the power in the hands of the players.

There’s also a higher gear rarity level on the way: eternal. And the devs teased, although did not elaborate upon, being able to activate upgrades simply by doing stuff in the game.

More to come

Trion figures that if it’s not broken, you should add more love to it. So expect the expansion to include even more artifact collections, more instant adventures, more cosmetics, more achievements, and more dimension decor. The looking for group system will also be expanding to include raids as well, in case you’ve had a hard time finding enough friends to run one.

Love rifts? You can eat all of your fill and then some with the planar assault mode. Basically, this tosses players and parties into an endless string of rifts in the vein of instant adventures.

If raids and rifts aren’t enough of a thrill for you, Trion would like to show you Starfall Prophecy’s fortress sieges. These are “uber” open-world fights that take the game’s dynamic event tech in an interesting direction.

Not all of the expansion’s content will be coming out on day one of the launch. The devs are holding back on two pieces for later consumption: Starfall Prophecy’s raid and the majority of the Tenebrian Schism zone. This is much in line with how Trion has handled past endgame rollouts and is designed to give players time to acclimate to the expansion before throwing in the toughest challenges.

The studio promised that it will be going into greater detail on all of Starfall Prophecy’s features and contents in the days and weeks leading up to the eventual launch. But for now, you have to ask yourself if you’ve got a cosmonaut outfit somewhere in your wardrobe for your trip into planar space.

Update: Trion asked us to remove the screenshots it sent us that made the drake mount appear to be flying, and we have complied. The mount does not fly, and Trion does not want to mislead anyone into thinking it does!